by Anne Perry
“… because I could make it behave, and you couldn’t?” Caleb finished, ignoring the judge. It was as if no one existed in the room but himself and Ravensbrook. “Remember how you beat me because I took the peaches from the conservatory?”
Goode was on his feet, but powerless.
“That was seven years earlier,” Ravensbrook replied, not looking at Caleb, but staring straight ahead of him still. “You took every peach. You deserved punishment.”
The judge banged his gavel again.
“Mr. Goode, either keep your client’s behavior appropriate to this court or I shall have him removed and continue the case in his absence. Make that plain to him, sir.”
Caleb swung around, his face twisted with fury. “Don’t talk to me through a third party, as if I weren’t here, damn you! I can hear what you’re saying and I can understand you. What bloody difference does it make whether I’m here or not anyway? You say what you want about me. Believe what you want. You’ll believe what suits your idea of the way you want things to be!” His voice rose even more. “What does the truth matter? What do you care who killed whom, as long as your world stays the same, with the same comfortable, reassuring lies? Cover it all up! Bury it! Put a white cross over it and say a prayer to your God that he’ll forgive you, then go away and forget. I’ll see you all in hell, be sure of it! I’ll be there and waiting for you!”
The judge looked tired and sad. “Take the prisoner down,” he instructed the warders.
Caleb sank down suddenly, his head in his hands.
Ebenezer Goode rose and walked at least halfway towards the bench.
“My lord, may we have a brief adjournment so I may advise my client? I believe I can persuade him to keep silence.”
“There’s no need,” Caleb interrupted, jerking his head up. “I shan’t speak again. There’s nothing else to say.”
The judge glanced at Rathbone.
“I am ready to proceed, my lord,” Rathbone replied. He had no desire to break the mood by an adjournment.
“Another outburst and I will act,” the judge warned.
“Yes, my lord.” Goode returned to his seat without looking towards the dock.
Rathbone faced Lord Ravensbrook again.
“I think part of my question has already been answered, but if you could mention one or two other instances, it would give the court a fuller picture. For example, how did the two brothers fare in their academic studies?”
Ravensbrook’s body was as rigid as if he were in a military parade.
“Angus was excellent at his work, especially mathematics, history and geography,” he said, staring ahead of him. “He was less interested in Latin and the classics, but he studied them because I wished it. He was a most admirable boy, and abundantly repaid me all I ever did for him.”
A ghost of a smile crossed his face and vanished again.
“I believe in later years he grew to appreciate the value of Latin, at least. It is such a superb discipline for the mind. He always understood the need for that. Caleb never did. He was always unruly, desiring to rebel, to overthrow, even to destroy. It was something in him I could never govern. I tried everything I knew, and everything failed.”
“Did he say anything about Angus’s success?” Rathbone asked.
Ravensbrook’s voice was hard and low.
“To begin with he merely expressed resentment. Later his feelings grew into a positive hatred, a jealousy he seemed unable to control.”
“Did he ever resort to physical violence?”
Ravensbrook’s face was filled with an emotion so deep he seemed to shake very slightly and his skin was pale and tight across his high, narrow cheekbones. But to Rathbone at least, it was unreadable. There could have been anger in it, frustration, knowledge of failure, guilt, or nothing other than a deep, aching grief.
“I cannot answer you of my own knowledge,” Ravensbrook said almost under his breath, and yet his words carried in a silent room where not a man or woman moved. Not a boot creaked, not a skirt rustled. “If they fought, I had not seen them.”
“Did either of them ever sustain injuries you could not account for otherwise?” Rathbone pursued the inevitable.
Caleb was still motionless in the dock, his head bent, face hidden as though he had accepted defeat.
“I don’t recall,” Ravensbrook answered. “Youths will climb trees, ride horses, drive carriages and gigs dangerously.” The set of his jaw made it obvious he could be drawn no further.
“Naturally.” Rathbone bowed and accepted defeat. “At what age did they leave home to go their separate ways, my lord?”
Ravensbrook winced as if he had been struck.
“Angus joined a company of dealers in the City just after his eighteenth birthday. They were acquaintances of mine, and were keen to have him.” There was pride in his tone, a slight lift to his head. “It seemed an excellent opportunity, and he grasped it eagerly. He did extremely well. It was not long before he rose within the company, and as you know, eventually founded his own business.”
“And Caleb?” Rathbone said.
“Caleb left shortly before that. He simply walked out. I heard rumor that he had been seen in the village, stories of drinking, brawling.” Ravensbrook remained silent for a moment. There was not a sound in the room. “Then they ceased,” he finished. “I presume that was when he went to London.”
“But he did not take up any position, any calling?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Did you seek to find any position for him?”
Ravensbrook winced. “I could not recommend him to anyone. It would have been dishonest. He was a violent and deceitful man, and appeared possessed of very few skills that were of any use.”
In the crowd Enid Ravensbrook sat with such a pity in her face one might have thought it was that which had ravaged her rather than disease. Hester slid her arm around her and held her with a tenderness as if she might break.
“I see,” Rathbone murmured. “Thank you, my lord. Did he at this time express any hatred or jealousy towards his brother, who sounds to have and to be everything he was not?”
“Yes, frequently,” Ravensbrook acknowledged. “He both hated and despised his brother.”
“Despised him?” Rathbone affected surprise.
Ravensbrook’s face was bitter. “He thought Angus weak and dependent, lacking in either courage or individuality. He thought him a coward, and said so. I imagine it was his way of excusing his own failure, in his mind.”
“Possibly.” Rathbone nodded. “We are, most of us, loath to admit fault in ourselves. Thank you, my lord. That is all I have to ask you. Would you be so good as to remain for my learned friend to speak with you.”
Ebenezer Goode was courteous, and at least outwardly genial. He rose to his feet and strolled into the center of the floor, his startling face full of interest.
“All this must be deeply distressing for you, Lord Ravensbrook. It would be for any man. I shall be as brief as I am able.” He sighed. “You have painted a vivid picture of two brothers who began with a deep bond between them and grew apart, one favored, obedient, talented; the other rebellious, unconventional, and rightly or wrongly, feeling himself less favored. It was not surprising he should express a resentment and a jealousy.” He glanced at the jury with his dazzling, wolfish smile. “Brothers do fight with each other at times. Any family man will tell you that. Yet you say that you never witnessed any of their fights?”
“That is correct.” There was no expression on Ravensbrook’s face.
“And the resultant injuries, whether from fights or other youthful masculine pursuits,” Goode pursued, “such as climbing trees, riding horses and so on, were they serious? For example, were there ever broken bones, concussions, dangerous bleeding?”
“No, merely abrasions and some severe bruising.” Ravensbrook remained expressionless, his voice flat.
“Tell me, my lord, did either brother suffer these injuries very much more
severely than the other?” Goode inquired.
“No. No, as far as I can remember, they were fairly equally matched.”
Goode shrugged. “And nothing was serious, nothing that you would consider a wounding, never intent to maim or permanently to damage?”
“No.”
“In other words, much as you or I may well have sustained in our youth?”
“Yes, if you will,” Ravensbrook agreed, his voice still without lift or interest, as though the entire subject were tedious.
“So in your knowledge, this regrettable jealousy never resulted in anything more than words?” Goode pressed.
“Not in my knowledge.”
Goode gave the court his wide, gleaming smile.
“Thank you, my lord. That is all.”
And so the trial progressed, and continued throughout the afternoon and the following day. Rathbone called Arbuthnot, who testified that Angus had come into the offices on the day of his disappearance, that a woman had visited him, after which he had declared that he was going to visit his brother, and expressed his intention to return, at least by the following day.
Ebenezer Goode could not shake him, and did not try.
Next followed a procession of witnesses from Limehouse and the Isle of Dogs, all adding their small pieces to the picture. It built slowly, indistinctly. It was all indicative, nothing conclusive. But the picture was dark, the setting for tragedy, and everyone in the courtroom could feel it like a coldness in the air.
Rathbone was aware at the edge of his mind of Hester sitting next to Enid Ravensbrook, of their faces as they watched the parade of frightened and troubled people one by one adding their few words, their tiny addition of color, to the story, still so full of gaps and shadows. He forced it to the edge of his awareness. Their feelings must not matter. Nor must those of Caleb, now sitting forward in the dock, staring down towards the crowd, although whose face he watched, Rathbone could not know, but his expression was still the same mixture of anger, pain and triumph.
Ebenezer Goode questioned them also, and showed just how fragmentary was their evidence. The picture remained partial, distorted, illusionary. But he could not dispel the ever-growing awareness of hatred, darkness, and the conviction that Angus Stonefield was dead, and by whatever means it was the man in the dock, with his passion of suppressed violence, who had accomplished it.
10
AFTER HE HAD FINISHED his evidence, Monk left the court. There was nothing he could accomplish there, and his own inner fear drove him to pursue the truth about Drusilla Wyndham. It was no longer a matter of what she could do to ruin his reputation and his livelihood, it was the question within himself as to what manner of man he was that she wished to, even at such a cost to herself.
She had accused him of assaulting her, of trying to force himself upon her. Was it possible that although he had certainly not done so this time, on some occasion in the past he had?
The thought was repulsive to him. He could not imagine any pleasure whatever in taking a woman against her will. It would seem a degrading performance to both parties, devoid of tenderness or dignity and with no communication of the mind, nothing shared beyond the most rudimentary physical contact, and afterwards the shame and the regret, and the sense of futility.
Had he really done such a thing?
Only if he were then a completely different man.
But the fear plagued him, waking him in the night with a choking in the throat and a sudden coldness. Perhaps the fear was as bad as a reality?
On leaving the Old Bailey he went straight to find Evan. He must see the records for himself, even if he had to be smuggled into the police station after hours, as a witness or a suspect, so he could read the files of all his old cases which had ended in the ruin or death of anyone.
Again he had to wait for Evan. He paced back and forth, unable to sit down, his muscles jumping, his mind tormenting him with frustration.
The desk sergeant looked at him with a certain pity.
“Yer look right tore up, Mr. Monk,” he observed. “If it’s real urgent, like, I can tell yer w’ere Mr. Evan is.”
“I should be most grateful,” Monk added. He tried to smile at the man, but he knew it ended as a grimace, his lips pulled over his teeth.
“Twenty-five Great Coram Street, just orff Brunswick Square. Know where that is I ’spec’?”
“Oh, yes.” It was opposite Mecklenburg Square, where they had found the body of the man he had so nearly killed before the accident. He could not ever forget that. “Yes, I do, thank you.” The man’s name flashed into his mind. “Parsons.”
The sergeant’s face lit with a smile. He had not realized that Monk remembered him.
“Welcome, sir, I’m sure.”
Monk raced out and caught a hansom at the end of the street, swinging himself up and shouting the address at the driver as he threw himself into the seat.
He was then obliged to wait standing in the icy wind in Great Coram Street while Evan concluded his business, but when he emerged he saw Monk and recognized him instantly, perhaps because men dressed as he was seldom stood idly on pavements in late February.
“I found it!” he said triumphantly, striding across towards him, hunching his shoulders and pulling his greatcoat collar higher, shivering a little, but his face radiated success.
Monk felt a kind of breathlessness, a hope so painful it almost choked him. He swallowed before he could speak.
“Found it?” He dared not even make it plain he meant the reference to Drusilla, in case it was not. He might have meant merely something concerning his present investigation. It was hard for Monk to remember there were other matters, other crimes, other people’s lives.
“Well, I think it is,” Evan qualified it very slightly, moving smartly away from the curb as a brougham clattered by. “The name Buckingham is there.” He touched Monk on the arm and turned to walk against the wind along Great Coram Street towards the square with its bare trees outlined against the sky. “The reason it took me so long to find,” he went on, “was that it wasn’t a capital case at all, only an embezzlement, and not of very much.”
Monk said nothing. His footsteps rang on the cold stone. It made no sense, at least not so far.
“A Reginald Sallis embezzled some funds from the church,” Evan continued the tale. “A matter of about twenty pounds or so, but it was reported to the police and investigated. It was unpleasant, because the money was from an orphans’ fund, and suspicion fell on a lot of people before the case was proved.”
“But it was proved?” Monk said urgently. “We didn’t get the wrong man?”
“Oh no,” Evan assured him, keeping pace. “It was definitely the right man. Good family, but a bit of a rake. Apparently very handsome, or at least had a fine way with women.”
“What makes you say that?” Monk asked quickly. They had turned into the square and were walking across the grass towards Landsdowne Place and the Foundling Hospital, which lay ahead of them. They must skirt around it to Guildford Street.
“The evidence of his involvement was rather carefully concealed by two young ladies, both of them apparently in love with him,” Evan replied. “Or more accurately, one of them felt very deeply, the other, her sister, was merely flirting.”
“This doesn’t explain anything!” Monk said desperately, brushing past a Hussar in uniform. “A romantic rivalry between sisters, a petty embezzlement for which a young rake got … what? A year? Five years?”
“Two years,” Evan answered, his face suddenly tight and his eyes full of pity. “But he died of gaol fever in Coldbath Fields. He wasn’t a particularly pleasant young man, he robbed the charitable funds of the church, but he didn’t deserve to die alone in prison for it.”
“Was that my fault?” Monk felt the same wrench of pity. He had seen the Coldbath Fields prison and would not have wished it on any living thing. He could remember the cold that ate into the bones, the damp of the walls as if they were forever weeping, t
he smell of mold and sour places that are never open to the air. One could taste the despair in it. He could close his eyes and see the men, shaven-headed, in the backbreaking exercises of passing the shot, endlessly, pointlessly moving cannon balls from one place to another, around in a ring, or the treadmill, the cages graphically known as the “cockchafers.” The enforced silence beat in his ears, where all human exchange was forbidden.
“Was that my fault?” he demanded again with sudden violence, stopping Evan by grasping his arm so he winced and was forced to swing around to face him.
“It was your doing,” Evan said without deviating his gaze at all. “But the man was guilty. The sentence was the judge’s to give, not yours. What Drusilla Buckingham could not forgive you for, I should imagine, was that you used her to catch Sallis. You told her he was betraying her with her own sister, Julia. In rage and hurt she gave you what you wanted.”
Monk felt the cold bite into the core of his body. He was no longer aware of his feet on the pavement or the carriages coming and going along Guildford Street, the clink of harness.
“And was he?”
“I don’t know,” Evan answered him. “There’s nothing to suggest it.”
Monk let out his breath slowly. He hated the misery in Evan’s eyes, the refusal to excuse him, but he had no argument. He felt the same revulsion for himself. The man might have been guilty, but why had he pushed the hurt so far? Was it worth using a woman’s jealousy to betray her lover to the Coldbath Fields, for a few pounds from the church funds, albeit the poor box?
He wouldn’t do it now. He would let it go. The shame would be enough. If the vicar knew, even if Drusilla knew in her heart, was that not all it really needed?
